Peter Fenton & Victor Lazarte - Purpose and Partnership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.354]

My guests this week are Peter Fenton and Victor Lazarte. Peter and Victor are both General Partners at Benchmark. Of the six equal partners at the storied venture firm, Peter is the longest serving and Victor is the newest, having spent the past decade founding and building Wildlife Studios into one of the biggest independent mobile gaming companies in the world. Peter has been a board member at Wildlife for the past four years and has a remarkable track record of tech investing over his two decades at Benchmark. In our discussion, we talk about the core motivators behind great entrepreneurs, Benchmark's unique operating philosophy, and what it's like to transition from builder to investor. Please enjoy this conversation with Peter Fenton and Victor Lazarte. Listen to Founders Podcast: #326 Anna Wintour For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. Stretch your research budget with flexible expert calls you can trust. At a fraction of the cost of traditional expert networks, Tegus customers pay only what an expert charges – with zero markups and no confusing call credits – netting an average 70% savings. Don’t want to conduct a full hour call? Tegus offers the ability to schedule 30-minutes, an offer you won’t find anywhere else. And they don’t stop there. With white-glove custom sourcing for every project and robust compliance measures, including a dedicated 50+ analyst team that vets every call transcript, Tegus ensures your privacy and protection. As the industry innovator for qualitative insights, Tegus helps you find the right experts you need at a quality and speed that can’t be matched. For a limited time, as a listener, you can trial Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes (00:04:10) - (First question) - Victor’s early expectations after being at the company for just three months (00:05:39) - What Victor misses from the operating life (00:06:59) - Peter’s opinion on what makes Benchmark a fascinating company (00:15:00) - Peter and Victor’s perspective on the significance of the phrase “life’s work” (00:24:19) - The influence of market tailwinds on success in investing (00:29:42) - How to keep founders’ generative drive at peak levels (00:32:39) - Balancing aggression, desire and generative drive when building and operating a business (00:34:22) - Victor’s approach to dealing with pleasure seeking as a successful operator (00:38:29) - Why Benchmark intentionally raises funds at half the suggested amount (00:43:13) - Lessons learned from navigating challenging scenarios in venture capital (00:46:27) - What excites Victor as he starts a new venture at Benchmark (00:48:19) - Why AI is more akin to the internet than crypto (00:52:41) - The significance of platform-based businesses in the contemporary landscape (00:57:45) - The impact tech giants exert on new entrants in the industry (00:61:00) - Victor’s opinion on what makes great games and great gaming businesses (01:13:44) - Where Peter and Victor feel they have areas to grow (01:19:48) - Perspectives on human progress (01:21:14) - The kindest thing that anyone has done for both Peter and Victor